Thursday, December 25, 2008

Merry Christmas...!*

So, somehow I manage to break my leg on Christmas Day.

The entire time I thought I had just sprained my ankle from the fall but turns out it's fractured in 2 places. I am keeping the details of the accident a secret so I can make up awesome stories about how I broke my leg :)

Well since I broke my right leg it means I won't be starting off 2009 on the "right" leg unfortunately but I'm not going to let a broken leg stop me from all my PeerFX plans for January!

A couple of investor forums coming up so it will be a busy strategy month for us. The past month we have been testing which ancillary services make sense to add to the core forex service...so that has kept us busy in terms of researching the viability of such services and asking for the opinions of all our "stakeholders" - customers, partners, investors, our own team etc. I am committed to the belief that everything a business does should increase the size of the entire pie so that every stakeholder group gets MORE instead of just redistributing amongst the groups.

...I think posting on the company blog right after you break your leg is an indication that I am a workaholic? I think this is a test for how much pain I can take since I am refusing to take painkillers.

Anyway, Merry Christmas to everyone and drive/walk carefully out there as it's still snowing and super slippery!

Monday, December 15, 2008

The Tech Team

So here's the plan. To speed up our development we're looking for a full-time tech person working alongside a contracted development team.

The full-time person's role will evolve from hands-on coding to providing the vision for PeerFX's tech strategy as the team grows and the business provides services in addition to the PeerFX Currency Exchange service. They will evaluate the opportunities and participate in the idea identification, development and service implementation process. This sounds like a fun thing to do but searching for someone with a passion in this area and also the ability to make the tech strategy happen has been like trying to find a needle in a haystack. (interested? We're still looking for YOU to join our team - send your CV here: info@peerfx.com)

As for the contracted development team, we've been very fortunate to receive a vote of confidence from Evident Point. The wonderful individual responsible for managing this team was the past CIO of Custom House and brings extensive experience from building forex platforms. His development team were also his teammates back at Custom House and I know that it will be quite the experience working with such a fabulous team of dedicated individuals.

We will begin working on the system infrastructure in Jan 09 and aim to complete our multi-currency system for commercial launch in Summer of 2009.

I am extremely excited about 2009 as things seem to be falling into the RIGHT places! :)

Hopefully we will find our full-time tech person soon too. That would definitely complete a great start to 2009!

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

GREAT Tech Teams are Hard to Find

What constitutes a GREAT tech team? From the perspective of someone looking to hire a tech team to take on our system development, the team must have the following 3 traits:

1) Work Ethics

2) Professionalism (meets deadlines, works collaboratively with clients to develop system requirements)


3) Open Communication

Notice that all of the above did not refer to the level of technical skill of the team - I think it's because from shopping around for a tech team it appears that everybody says they can program all these things that you ask them to. So if the programming is "almost" a commodity, what other factors are going to make a team stand out?

I found that I am especially eager to work with a team that displays honesty, a high standard of work ethics and professionalism - most importantly, they let me know what they CAN and CAN'T realistically do within the set timeline. A lot of other developers that I have met with have over promised and of course this means further contracts down the road are out of question.

Here's a tip to those tech teams out there trying to win contracts...businesses are looking for teams that make them feel prioritized, considers the business team's contributions (you may know the best way to build a system, but we know best in terms of what the system needs in order for us to profit off this thing you're building for us), and delivers on time or at least shows a best efforts to meet the set milestones.

I believe that good people cluster and I have always worked off this theory. This is how I found my current contractors, employees and advisors. I know there are tons of other great people out there but until I know them on a personal basis I am hesitant about bringing somebody onto the team. It's really true that people like to do business with people they know...not what you know, but who you know.

Friday, December 5, 2008

December Thus Far

Money is going through the system! So far we know that for a transaction complete it takes 3 business days. Here's how it works!

Day 1: Customer books the transaction and sends the money to PeerFX
Day 2: PeerFX converts the funds and sends the money back to Customer
Day 3: Funds arrive in Customer's bank account!

For the transaction we completed, our Customer saved roughly $1000 CAD converting $35,000 USD to CAD!

I'm crazy excited that it works! IT WORKS!

So we are up and running but we need to go through the customer identity verification procedures before we can add users to the testing platform. Let me know if you are interested at info@peerfx.com!